The ShroomErie

As of last Friday my best friend of 35+ years and I became Pennsylvanias 69th Mushroom farm. Legit AF......

The ShroomErie LLC.






We've had some hurtles however we've been able to overcome most everything so far fairly easily. We are good with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Pennsylvania Department of Health, the USDA and we got a starter building that's good with the Zoning board to do what we're going to do. Our last thorn in the side is Code Enforcement. They're being retards but we'll get it worked out in the end.

I thought I'd start a thread. It will help me to monitor our progress as we get up and running. It's also a pretty dope process since it isnt like growing plants, at all. I'll break it down as much as I can, as I go along.

All comments, advice, criticism etc. is encouraged. This is all new to me. Other than already growing Psilocybin Cubensis as a hobby in yhe past, I'm told Gourmet Mushrooms are a lot more forgiving as well as easier to grow than the Psyidelics are. So far, it's fairly familiar to me. My partner has been growing Gourmet Mushrooms for a few years now. He started off with P. Cubensis himself as well. He is actually who showed me how to grow Mushrooms to begin with.

Laws prevent us from grown those strains however we do currently have 6 strains of P. Cubensis in liquid culture that we can legally sell to everywhere except California, Georgia and Iowa. Here's a little menu I whipped up. Nothing is permanent yet. We still have to get a logo, website and million other things together but in time, it will all fall together.





We plan on supplying local restaurants, grocery stores and farmer markets. Co-ops as well as we'll be 100% organic. The D.I.Yer and the general hobbyist. We also plan on selling dozens of varieties online through either liquid culture or Agar plates with the strains already started. Except for the Cubensis strains, we can only sell that in liquid culture as the mycelium contains a small amount of psilocybin in it making it a controlled substance.

A little deeper background.....

My partner has worked for a Major food distributor here delivering goods to restaurants all over the Tristate for the last 16 years. He's planned the seed in many of the restaurants he delivers to over the years that he grows mushrooms etc. and showed them samples and what not. Many are interested. Hell, locally, the selection is garbage and we really think we can do better. I'm not even a people person and I got 2 restaurants I frequent on board easily.

I myself have worked for the last 25 years as a C.S.T in an Operating Room. Growing mushrooms requires a great deal of sterile technique as well as how to prevent cross contamination of biological samples knowledge and how to maintain sterilitiy as well as an aseptic environment. I also very much know my way around a lab. My expertise isn't in the grow tent, that's my partners strong point. My strengths are in the start game up until fruiting. I'll perfect that part as we go since I got a pretty good teacher as a buisness partner. I'll in turn teach him better sterile technique.

 

Our starting samples.

 

This is the ghetto AF way of doing transfers, cloning, inoculation etc. The home made SAB or Still Air Box. When working with spores your competing with every other bacteria or mold in the environment. If that gets into your culture, it contaminates the samples/Agar plates/ Spawn etc or whatever your doing. We have a pretty expensive laminar Hepa Flow hood coming that's being custom made courtesy of Lab Rats.



However until it arrives we're stuck
working in the SAB for now. As ghetto as it looks it actually is pretty efficiently effective. Pain in the ass to move around in though.

 

This is our liquid culture we make. It's basically a food medium mixture that is inoculated with the species spore. It makes more spores basically. This is sort of like the breeding pen lol.







What you see here are millions of microscopic spores clumping together making a network. Multiplying rapidly.

 

From there we go to Agar typically however, we skipped and went right to straight inoculation to grain. This requires the grain to be sterilized. The jars of liquid culture also have to be sterilized prior to inoculation with the spores. We just use pressure cookers to accomplish this. A real chambered sterilizer costs anywhere from 10k up to 80k+. Pressure cookers or insta pots accomplish this same goal, it's just more time consuming. What I can do in 4 minutes at work in an autoclave takes us 2 hours in a pressure cooker.

 

Some inoculated grain bags process pictures.

Direct Inoculation from liquid culture spore sample directly to spawn bags.



Then they go in the dark for a while to incubate. We have a place now so we don't have to be doing it like this at my house anymore lol.

When I show people this photo I tell them "one will protect your body, one will protect your house, one will protect your soul and the last one will protect your mind. You can figure out which one is which on your own.



Then, mycelium basically colonize into a network using the grain as a food source. I love watching rhizomorphic growth. This is dope AF to me. Especially under the scope. It's even better in the petri dishes. We'll go over that some other time. Once they fully colonize the grain they are ready to take to substrate and then fruiting conditions.





We really need to get our grow tents up now or these will start to fruit in the bags. I put them in our cooler to slow them down a little but they are ready to go to friuting now.

 

Just some photos of the grow room. This area will change dramatically over time. We're only a week in.



We don't recognize child labor laws around here. You get to work or you get the whip....

 

We need a faster way to sterilize substrate so we are making a steam generator out of a 24L stock pot and a heating element, bobber valve, water intake and the power to run it. That will produce the steam that will go through a line into a 55gal steel drum where our substrate will be in.

Lol I sure hope this landlord has some good insurance.

I'll come back to this when we finish it. Just started it today.

 

Lol our entrance door. We didn't write it but found it humorous all the same.

 

My friend made a bomb ass fogger/mister for the grow tent today so I wouldn't be surprised if the steam sterilizer don't work as well when finished.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ib5QxqoOwzA?feature=share

 

A little lite reading before I go to bed.

 

Finished the steamer. Just have to rig it up to the 55gal. Steel drum.







Don't look like Nanas sauce pot no more.

 

Got the upper deck pretty much finished just have to add a railing around it. That's going to be our chill area eventually. Probably store stuff out of the way up there too.



The Grow tents on its way up. Probably get it finished up tomorrow.

 

Are they mushrooms for cooking or they the type that makes you trip.

 

Gourmet. We do have the ones that make you trip as well. 6 different strains though a cube is a cube is a cube. We legally can't sell Psilocybin containing mushrooms. We can however sell their spores for microscopic study or whatever it is you choose to do with them. Lol. We just can't grow them for you.

 

69th I found that part to be the most exciting.

 

Lol yea when I first researched what kind of competition we have here I was shocked there were so many up and running already. Upon further research though, Pa supplies 2/3rds of the US mushroom supply. All these other farms are on the eastern side of PA or central PA. Projections show an 8.7% growth in the industry every year since 2018 and is projected to continue growing at that rate up until at least 2028. Most of the farms here focus on Torks or Button mushrooms or portobellos. While we have these species too, we don't have much interest in growing them any time soon. Just selling the liquid or plate cultures of them locally or via the internet. We're going to focus more on strains of Oysters and lions mane to start with. We'll move on to other species as we grow further down the road. That's the plan anyway.

 

Got the grow tent up today. What a fucking pain in the ass that was. Done though so one less thing to worry about.

 

Do u feel the P.E is better done in a mono tub or going with pint jars and casing em ..I recently seen some koi samui super strain the stubby variant and mono tubs were shifty at best

 

I've never done pint jars and cakes. Only monotub so it's hard for me to comment on it. P.E is probably better done in a tub though because the friuts arent exactly small like Amazonian or B+ etc. I'd say go with what is working for you the best. I see people having success with both. I do notice that the tubs produce more volume and the fruits tend to look bigger since they have more area to grow. I've seen some real neat novelty grows done over the last couple years using stuffed animals or ceramic sculptures as the cakes that were pretty dope to see grown out. There are so many TEKs out there. I've only done Agar to Grain and Grain to substrate in monos.

Anyone who's really interested in this stuff this is the best site for information you'll find on the net. Very helpful people..

https://www.shroomery.org/

Can also join them on the FB group.